


Stories of the Second Self: Guilt Trip

by John_Steiner



Series: Alter Idem [70]
Category: Urban Fantasy - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:48:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22554286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner
Summary: When an angelic friend was reported killed in a failed home invasion in Silverton, Dean and his human friend knew they had to get out of town. It wasn't the police they feared tracking them down, but the other law of Silverton, Papa Delane Henry. Hiding out in a remote cabin, Dean discovers just how long a reach the Bokor of the Silverton Voodoo Chapter possessed
Series: Alter Idem [70]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618813





	Stories of the Second Self: Guilt Trip

When a thwarted home invasion in Silverton hit the news Kyle and Dean made tracks out of Cincinnati. They knew it had to have been Travis. His idea of using his bullet resistant wings somehow failed, and Dean wondered if his own would also.

Kyle was still human, but as a former Army Ranger that made him better at robbing banks than Dean himself. So, when Kyle suggested to call their planned heist off and run Dean didn't ask questions. The two high-tailed it out to an old cabin Kyle owned.

And yet, even here Dean felt uneasy. Stories abounded about unsolved crimes in Silverton ever since the occupation ended and civil government restored. Dean would've expected it from a mob-run town, but Silverton had no mafia family running it.

To set his mind at ease, Dean went to the window by the cabin door and looked out. It warly January but the snow wasn't too deep, which didn't sit well with Dean. He felt sure someone was coming for them.

"Whoever got Travis is going to find us," Dean said, still staring outside.

"Come off it, man," Kyle replied, leaned back in a recliner holding a beer on the arm. "January and a winter whiteout to top it off. Even if they knew this cabin were out here they'd be shit out of luck finding it."

"So, you told no one that you own this place?" Dean queried.

"The land is inherited and I built the cabin myself," Kyle answered, and then took a swig before adding, "And I didn't hit up Lowes for materials. No purchase records to follow, and the only copy of the deed is locked up in a safe in this cabin. Ain't nobody gonna find shit."

"You even thought to stock it up with beer," Dean observed, sweeping his transparent wing at Kyle.

"Hey," Kyle leaned forward and absently rolled the beer can between his hands, "I built up my supplies slowly. I was careful. Most of it is surplus from the days of the occupation, and the rest I bought at random gas stations and mini marts. Don't worry."

It didn't settle the matter for Dean, but he wasn't in the mood to argue with the guy who had the backup plan when he didn't. Travis was supposed to steal the guns they needed from a high scale house in Silverton owned by an upper-middle income family that, while known to be armed because the father bragged a lot, wasn't expected to offer real resistance.

So, around ever hour, Dean went to the window and looked out at the wall of white that the world had become. Just the scenery made Dean feel colder than the cabin interior was with the fire going. He fluttered his wings, and reflected on when they first broke through the skin.

At first, he took the two tiny knobs to be melanoma, and had them checked out. The doctor examined them, to be shocked by embryonic traces of arm bones. Suspecting Dean to be a medical chimera, they ran DNA tests and found he was born of just one fertilization.

Playing it safe, Dean had the bumps removed. Yet, they grew back a couple months later, and from a more extensive exam it was determined they weren't cancerous. However, continue to grow they did under medical monitoring, and by then stories of other supernaturals emerged.

After a year, Dean's wings were full sized, and with it came changes to his body and brain to allow flight. Then some people just got strange with him. The really religious who believed in angels before they were real would get all doe-eyed with him, making him feel uncomfortable.

Deep down, Dean knew he wasn't a good guy. He didn't have a record yet with the Cincinnati PD or courts, but he figured it was only a matter of time. Abusive to his ex, and prone to flashing his handgun to people he got into arguments with out on the street, and then there was that time when he swiped money from his work. Dean never got caught, and quit over some other matter, and so felt he'd gotten away with it.

Someone knew him. That's the thought which nagged at Dean over the course of the day. A couple hours before dark Dean checked outside again, only this time it wasn't all snow.

With his better than perfect human sight, Dean could make out the dark clad figure walking unerringly toward the cabin. Their head was hung low, to pick their steps he figured, and obscure by what he realized was long raven-black hair. But for the blowing snowfall he'd have been able to make out part of the face despite it being a couple hundred yards.

"Shit out of luck, huh?" Dean called out to Kyle.

"The hell you say," Kyle came out of store room, where he been reorganizing, and came up to the window next to Dean.

"I don't know if you can make her out yet," Dean said, "But whoever she is she's headed right for us."

Kyle went to a chest and rummaged through it until getting out a hunting rifle with a scope mounted.

"You're gonna shoot her?" Dean asked.

"What...?" Kyle was confused by the suggestion. "No, the scope. I wanna better look."

Dean turned to watch as well, and after the woman closed to within half the distance he noticed the particularly pale complexion. "Figure she's lost? Coming down with hypothermia?"

"Can't think of any other reason some random nobody turns out, let along a woman dressed like she's off to some cocktail party."

Both of them kept watching as she trudged through the snow, and around thirty yards away she looked up. Dean's blood ran cold, and Kyle's mouth dropped open.

"The fuck is up with her eyes?" Kyle gasped.

"Jesus, that's not skin of...," Dean caught onto what he was seeing, "She's dead. The bitch is dead and she's walking right toward us."

"Got your piece on 'ya?" Kyle looked Dean up and down.

"Yeah," Dean affirmed and pulled it out. "Right here."

When Dean looked out the window again, the woman was gone. "Shit, shit, shit!"

"'The fuck she go?" Kyle demanded, and ran to another window.

Dean took the opposite side and search around as much as the window. "Not this way."

The back wall had no window, and that made Dean turn gravely to Kyle. "One of us has gotta go out and look."

"One?" Kyle scoffed, "Fuck that! We're both goin' out. And fact, bring your wings up in front of you and go first."

Dean sagged and turned his head with resigned disgust. Kyle was no chickenshit, but he had a point. Dean went to the door first with Kyle right behind him poised as though he were about to raid a house in Baghdad.

Around the time Dean lightly rested his hand on the door handle, there came a thunderous bang to the door. Dean caught it right in the cheek when the door was blasted off its hinges, sending him and Kyle falling and scrambling respectively.

Dean rolled on his side slowly, having the sense knocked out of him and half aware he was in peril. After a moment, he forced himself to sit up, and his first clear sight was of Kyle backed in a corner with the rifle up in shaking hands. The frightful look on his face was stretched vertically as though a horror movie ghost.

"You think it was hard to find this shit house?" Demanded the woman, who drew Dean's attention back.

Her solid black eyes were disturbing enough, but she added sharp inhuman teeth to that. Her gray skin carried a hint of yellowish death, but no decay. Despite her exertion breaking down the door she wasn't huffing.  
She didn't breath at all.

"Shit," Dean breathed, "Wha'chu want?"

"I have a message needs delivering," she answered with an expression already severe-looking without the horror story extras. "You think you can do as you wish in Silverton and not pay for it? Papa Henry is very upset with you two. Just like he got rather upset with Travis."

Dean and Kyle looked at each other, but were drawn back to the dead woman speaking with that leering face. "You know Travis, who thought he could insult Papa Henry by robbing a client of his in Silverton. That was a nice house he hit up. Improved the market value. A police report would sully the resale, so Papa Henry-- resolved the matter himself."

"Travis is dead?" Kyle breathed with dread.

"Oh-hh," she replied, her intensifying features getting a jolt out of them, and then it was followed up by that grin which never reached her eyes as she spoke rapidly. "Dead is just the beginning of his problems. He's becoming fast acquainted with Papa Henry's power. How do you think I found you two?"

"Wait," Kyle dared interject, "Travis didn't know about my cabin."

"Quite true," she agreed with a contrasting sympathetic and sinister expression. "And most unfortunate for him. You two carry something else that Papa Henry can sniff out as easily. Papa Henry knows evil intimately. It carries like a breeze, and he's a sort of weather-vane when it comes to inner darkness."

"Hey," Kyle pleaded with his hand out to stave her back. "We didn't know About this Henry guy. We won't make no fuss and just go as far as he wants. Okay?"

"Not good enough," she hissed with disturbing enthusiasm, "You don't understand what your transgressions purchased. Papa Henry has reserved a special place for you to rest. Smaller than this, in fact."

With that, she produced two jars filled with differing colored grains in layers.

"What's that?" Dean asked, his eyes wide.

"Your new rooms," she turned to him with frightful cheer. "You see, I'm free to have your blood, but you gotta work off your debt with Papa Henry. It's like a lease with no exit clause."

Kyle suddenly burst onto his feet coming toward Dean. "Fuckin' move, forgot the ammo's in there!"

The woman jumped in, and punched Kyle in the stomach with a whoomph. Kyle practically curled around her fist. To Dean's amazement, when Kyle's feet lost contact with the floor the woman's hand didn't sink so much as an inch. She tossed Kyle back into the corner he'd been huddling in before.

Dean then realized he no longer had his handgun, and by the time he'd spotted it on the floor the woman already picked it up.

She turned it over in her hands, and then pulled another jolt out of Dean when she looked to him saying, "You really thought this would've saved you? It would just ruin my clothes and piss me off."

She tossed it outside into the snow, and then fell upon Dean, who screamed like a child. He didn't know where the thin chords came from, but the dead woman used them to tie him up starting with his wings. Strong as his upper body had become, nothing he did could resist her smaller hands that gripped like cold steel, leaving bruising in their wake.

Then, she placed him just so, and allowed him to witness Kyle's fate. Over the next two hours, she started on Kyle's ever-screaming form. Flayed skin left blood pooling up, which she scooped with a ladle to drink as she worked. Next, she cut away skin and muscle from Kyle's arm and leg bones using an ornate ritual dagger. Her last act was to deftly vivisect Kyle's chest and remove his heart.

Dean felt vomit rising up his throat, seeing Kyle's heart beating in her hand, yet he couldn't look away. She swiped her other hand over the top of it and lightly touched one of the opened jars. After, as Kyle's blood formed a pool around his lifeless body, she removed a short lock of hair.

Closing the jar, she tied the hair onto a knot using a strip of Kyle's shirt. Dean stared wide-eyed at the remaining jar, until the woman addressed him again.

"How rude of me," she said crouching down in front of him. "I didn't introduce myself. My name is Ellsa Laqouis. Papa Henry says names have power, and I've come believe it's true. Now that I know your name and you know mine, we'll work well together for a long time. Forever, in fact."

Dean's excruciating death was just as grizzly, and as Ellsa said, not his end. Hovering over the jar, he could see his body sprawled out on the floor. Then, he felt pushed down into the sands when the lid lowed over him. He witnessed the binding knot put around his domain, and knew that his suffering only began.


End file.
